He pushed and wriggled his way into it, aware of the Seti's amusement. Seti faced the uncertainties of space travel without pressure suits. While they had such suits for those who might need to work on the outer surface of a ship, they did not stock suits for the whole crew. It made sense. Most of the time when a Fleet vessel lost hull integrity, the crew never made it into their suits anyway. And of course a Seti would have been disgraced for insisting on a way of cheating chance. Still, Dupaynil was glad to have a suit, even though the Seti considered it another example of human inferiority.
He dogged the helmet down snugly and checked the seals of the seam that ran from throat to crotch. The suit had an internal com unit which allowed him to speak, or more often listen, to the Seti. This time, he heard the Safety Officer's instructions with amazement.
"Come to the bridge?"
Humans were never invited to the bridge of Seti ships. No human had ever seen the navigational devices by which the gamblers of the universe convinced themselves they were being obedient to chance while keeping shipping schedules.
"At once."
Dupaynil followed, sweating and grunting. He had not had to put on his suit for this. Seti kept breathable, if smelly, atmosphere in their ships. No doubt they intended to make him look even more ridiculous. He had heard, repeatedly, what the Seti thought of human upright posture. It occurred to him that they might have insisted on his suit simply to spare themselves the indignity of a human's smell.
When he reached the bridge, it bore no resemblance whatever to that of a Fleet ship of the same mass. It was a triangular chamber - room for the tails, he realized - with cushioned walls and thickly carpeted floor, not at all shiplike. Two Seti, one with the glittering neck-ring and tail ornament that he had been told signified ship's captain, were crouched over a small, circular, polished table, tossing many-sided dice, while one standing in the remaining corner recited what seemed to be a list of unrelated numbers. He felt cramped between the table and the hatch that had admitted him and then slammed behind him. The Seti ignored Dupaynil and he ignored that, finally trying to figure out what kind of game they were playing.
The dice landed with one face fiat up, horizontal. Three dice at a time, usually, but occasionally only two. He didn't recognize the markings. From where he stood, he could see three or four faces of each die and he amused himself trying to figure out what the squiggles meant. Green here, with a kind of tail going down. All three dice had this on the top face for a moment. Purple blotch, red square-in-square, a yellow blotch, two blue dots. The dice rose and fell, bouncing slightly, then coming to stillness. Green squiggles again, and on the other faces purple, blue dots, more red squares-in-squares.
The Seti calling out numbers paused through two throws. Dupaynil's attention slid from the dice to the Seti, wondering what the purple blotch on the napkinlike cloth around his neck meant. When he looked back at the board, the green squiggles were on top again.
Surely that couldn't be right, and surely they didn't just want an observer for the captain's nightly gambling spree. He watched the dice closely. In another two throws, he was sure of it. They were loaded, as surely as any set of dice that ever cheated some poor innocent in a dockside bar. Time after time the green squiggles came up on top. So why throw them? His mind wandered. Probably this wasn't the bridge at all. Some bored Seti officers had just wanted to bait their captive human. Then a fourth die joined the group in the air and down came three green squiggles and one purple blotch.
Three Seti heads swung his way, toothy jaws slightly open. He shivered, in his suit. If that was bad luck, and they thought he had brought it…
"Ahhh! Humann!" The captain's voice, through his comunit, had only the usual Seti accent. "It wass explained to me that you were ssent here by very sspecial luck. Ssso your luck continuess. As the luck fallss, you sshall be told, though it makess danger to usss."
Dupaynil could not bow. The suit gave him no room for it.
"Illustrious bringer of luck," he began, for that was part of the captain's title. "If chance favors your wish to share precious knowledge, my luck is great indeed."
"Indeed!" The captain reared back on massive hind legs, and snapped its jaws. A sign of amusement, Dupaynil remembered from handbooks. Sometimes species-specific. "Well, o lucky one, we ssshall sssee how you call your chance when you know all. We ssshall arrive even sssooner than you thought. And we shall arrive in forccce."
The Seti could not mean that the way a human would, Dupaynil thought. Surely not…
"Do you grasssp the flying ring of truth from tossssed baubles?" the Seti asked. Dupaynil tried to remember what that meant, but the Seti captain went on. "You ssshall sssee the ruin of your unlucky admiral, he who tossed your life against the wissdom of our Sek, in the person of the Commissioner of Commerce, and you shall see the ruin of your Fleet… and of the Federation itself, and all the verminous races who prize certainty over Holy Luck. Sssee it from the flagship, as you would say, of our fleet, invincible unless chance changes. And then, o human, we ssshall enjoy your flesh, flavored with the smoke of defeat." The captain's massive snout bumped the screen of Dupaynil's helmet.
From the frying pan of Sassinak's displeasure, to the fire of the conspirators on Claw, he had come to the Seti furnace. If this was luck, he would take absolute determinism from now on. It couldn't be worse. He hoped the Seti could not detect the trickles of sweat down his back. He could smell his own fear, a depressing stench. He tried for a tone of unconcern.
"How can you be certain of this destination by throwing dice?" Not real thought, but the first words that came into his mouth, idle curiosity.
"Ahhh…" The captain's tail slapped the floor gently, and its tail ornament jingled. "Not pleass or argumentss, but ssense. As chance favors, I sshall answer."
His explanation of the proceedings made the land of oblique sense Dupaynil expected from aliens. Chance was holy, and only those who dared fate deserved respect, but the amount of risk inherent in each endeavor determined the degree of additional risk which the Seti felt compelled to add by throwing dice or using random number generators. "The Glorious Chaos," as they named that indeterminate state in which ships traveled or seemed to travel fester than light, had sufficient uncertainty to require no assistance. So they tossed loaded dice, as a token of respect, and to allow the gods of chance to interfere if they were determined.
"War, as well," the captain continued, "has its own uncertainties, so that within the field of battle, a worthy commander may be guided by its own great wisdom and intuition. Occasionally one will resort to the dice or the throwing sticks, a gesture of courage all respect, but the more parts to the battle, the less likely. But you…" A toothy grin did not reassure Dupaynil at all. "You were another matter and judged sufficiently certain of unsuccess without our chance to place you in the toss. As your luck held, in the unmatched dice, so now I offer to chaos this chance for you to thwart us. 1 told you our plan, and you may ask what you will. You will not return to your quarters."
Dupaynil fought down a vision of himself as Seti snack-food. If he could ask questions, he would ask many questions.
"Is this venture a chance occurrence, or has some change in Federation policy prompted it?"
The captain uttered a wordless roar, then went into a long disjointed tirade about the Federation allies. Heavy-worlder humans, as victims of forced genetic manipulation, roused some sympathy in the Seti. Besides, a few heavyworlders had shown the proper attitude by daring feats of chance: entering a Hall of Dispute through the Door of Honor, for instance. Some humans were gamblers: entrepreneurs, willing to risk whole fortunes on the chance of a mining claim, or colonial venture. That the Seti could respect. The Paradens, for instance, deserved to lay eggs. (Dupaynil could imagine what the elegant Paraden ladies would think of that.) But the mass of humans craved security. Born slaves, they deserved the outward condition of it.